


Before the Summer of 95

by Ace_of_Spades_400



Series: The Last Standing [1]
Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bobby is a good person just emotionally fucked up, Bobby was their friend, Brothers, Canonical Character Death, Found Family, am i projecting a little bit?, love and support for these boys because its what they deserve, yes - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:20:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27090364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ace_of_Spades_400/pseuds/Ace_of_Spades_400
Summary: Bobby loved his friends, his brothers, his family. They were everything to him.
Relationships: alex/luke (mentioned)
Series: The Last Standing [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1977262
Comments: 6
Kudos: 83





	Before the Summer of 95

Robert ‘Bobby’ Wilkes hadn’t really known what it was like to have a family before Sunset Curve. He didn’t have it that bad, his parents didn’t hit him, didn’t yell at him, didn’t starve him. They bought him new school supplies every year and a new guitar for Christmas and they were happy but…

But his parents didn’t particularly care about him. They’d married young, right out of high school, because that was what was expected of them. They’d had a kid right after, because that was expected too. They’d wanted neither of these things. And his parents like each other, but don’t love each other. And they don’t mind him, even if they don’t love him.

They’re more roommates than parents, there in case the house is on fire, but not to raise him, to support him. It means that growing up Bobby had learned to fend for himself, to patch up his own skinned knees and count out the change for the takeout he ordered himself and clean his own room and hold himself when he was sad. No one else was going to do these things for him.

Bobby had gotten used to this arrangement at a young age, it didn’t bother him too much. What did bother him was when they tried to pretend otherwise, when his parents played at being this perfect, postcard family they were expected to be. When they were in public and his mother hugged him too tight and too long, her limbs too stiff. When his father put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed, laughing too loud and putting too much pressure. When they told him they loved him when the words clearly didn’t mean anything.

Sunset Curve changed a lot of things for him.

Luke and Alex had been friends long before Bobby had met them but they still carved out a space for him beside them. When Reggie joins them a few years later he fits into a spot none of them had noticed being empty.

The guys don’t mind that he doesn’t like touch all that much, that he can’t talk about his feelings like they can. He’s there and he’s listening and that’s enough for them.

The garage they call their studio was found by Alex, a few streets down from his house, the older woman who owns the building agrees to rent it out to them cheap with an added side of mowing her lawn once a week. 

It’s a huge space with a big windowed area in the back and a loft. They’re fifteen when they move all their equipment in, and it will be their home for the next two and a half years. 

They come to practice almost every day after school and pretty much every weekend. Whatever spare second they have is spent in the garage. It feels more like a home than the place he sleeps in. The garage is warm and loud and full of life.

But it’s not just a home, it’s a family. 

It’s an older brother in Alex, who knocks their shoulders together when he passes by and shares amused looks with him when Reggie and Luke are being particularly stupid. Who fusses over Bobby’s lack of a jacket in winter even though they life in California. Who can always see when Bobby is on the edge of screaming and sends the other two away so they can have some privacy.

It’s a brother in Luke, not quite younger or older, more like a twin really, in that they live on the same brainwave a lot of the time. Luke who bounces around excitedly and slaps Bobby on the back instead of hugging him like he clearly wants to. Who is always the first to goad Bobby into doing something stupid and fun that they’ll maybe regret later but is so unbelievably worth it now. Who doesn’t hesitate to tell Bobby just how much he loves him even if Bobby can’t say it back with words.

It’s a little brother in Reggie, which is weird really, because Reggie is honestly the oldest of all four of them. But Reggie is softer, almost timid at times, broken down from his parents, and he feels younger to all of them. Reggie comes to Bobby when he’s hurting, when he needs someone to shield him, because Luke is too much sometimes and Alex worries all the time. Reggie who waggles his eyebrows like he’s still twelve whenever Bobby is trying to flirt.

He also, somehow, acquires a little sister in all of this. Dani ‘call me Danielle and I’ll kick you in the shins’ Joyner is Alex’s five-years-younger sister or, as Bobby likes to call her, ‘the tiniest, angriest, ballerina’. Dani is Sunset Curve’s biggest fan and she comes by the studio twice a week (on Wednesdays and Sundays when she doesn’t have dance class) to cheer them on and throw her shoes at Bobby’s head from the loft. (She keeps tally in the banister with the hot pink pocketknife Reggie got her for her birthday.)

And it’s weird sometimes, to go from that quiet, aching house where his parents do not look at him to this loud, chaotic garage that is bursting with love. But he would not trade it for anything.

These are the memories he cherishes.

When they’re fifteen and Alex comes in to practice with three necklaces he’d found at a garage sale down the street and gives them each one. And they all wear them with pride and Luke and Reggie won’t stop telling Alex how cool they are, how much they love them, how they’ll never take them off.

Bobby cannot do that, cannot make himself say how much he loves the little lion pendant, how he’ll wear it forever. So instead he goes out to the thrift stores that night and finds a simple gold chain necklace with the ugliest little bauble on the end and he gives it to Alex, says, “It’s you dude.” And Luke and Reggie are roaring with laughter and Alex is trying to get him in a headlock.

The unidentifiable little charm gets passed around their bags like a game, but Alex wears the necklace every day.

A few days after Reggie turns sixteen he shows up to the studio in the worst looking van Bobby has ever seen. It’s an ugly shit brown color and it looks one hard brake from completely combusting. But Reggie grins, “Meredith was a gift from my uncle and she’s beautiful.”

“Meredith is a piece of shit.” Luke says and Alex and Bobby nod. Reggie gives them the silent treatment the whole night as he lovingly gives Meredith a bath and tells her she’s beautiful. 

Meredith becomes their van and Reggie paints their logo across the side, and they load all of their equipment into the back for every gig. And every time Reggie drives them to their shows Bobby sits in the passenger seat and grips the handle and Alex sits between them and prays loudly to God that the car doesn’t break down and somehow Luke will sleep the whole drive crammed into the back with their stuff.

Luke grabs him on his way to fifth period and says they’re going to a rock concert, just the two of them. He doesn’t even give Bobby time to grab his stuff out of his locker, just drags him out of school and to the nearest bus stop for a two-hour ride into the city.

The concert is amazing and Luke is buzzing with excitement afterwards, half a dozen lyrics obviously running in that overactive brain of his. They laugh the whole way back to the garage, Luke’s arm half slung over his shoulder for a lot of the walk, and Bobby doesn’t say anything about it because he’s fairly sure that if Luke doesn’t touch one of them every thirty minutes he will, actually, explode.

Dani comes into the studio with blood dripping down her face and Alex hovering anxiously beside her. She grins, teeth bloody, “Someone called Alex stupid, I beat them up.”

Bobby laughs so hard he falls off the couch, but gives her a fist bump that only hurts his hand a little bit. Luke is demanding to know where the jerks are so he can finish the job and Reggie is asking about her technique.

Dani, who’s had a crush on Reggie since she was nine, preens under his attention. “Hey Reg,” Bobby calls from the floor, “Looks like you have a knight in shining tutu to save you.” Reggie does not get the joke. Dani does, if the bookbag that slams into his stomach is any indication, “Jesus kid what do you have in this thing? Bricks?”

Those two months when they’re sixteen that Alex and Luke pretend they aren’t dating even though they very obviously are dating. Bobby looking at Reggie who is almost always snickering into his shoulder as the two make disgusting puppy dog eyes at each other across the studio.

The time Reggie gets so excited to tell them about his newest country song that he runs face first into the garage door and Alex laughs so hard he falls out of the loft and they have to take him to the hospital because he broke his arm.

Luke’s face when Bobby eats the very last slice of pizza with smug satisfaction. The absolute betrayal in his eyes like Bobby had just killed his puppy right in front of him. “How could you Bobby…” Luke says with what are actual, goddamn tears in his eyes.

“Shut up you baby.” Bobby says, then takes the last breadstick as well.

Unfortunately, not everything is sunshine and rock shows for them. And while the garage is home for Bobby, that starts to become a little more literal for some of them.

Bobby has never told Alex or Luke this, but Reggie was the first one to run away. Alex always leaves first to get home and Luke second even though he would obviously stay to practice all night. Reggie and Bobby had always lingered, not wanting to go home just yet, and that’s how he found out.

Bobby had stayed even later than usual one night when they were sixteen, trying to finish up the rhythm for the newest song Luke was writing. Reggie had stumbled in sometime around 11, crying softly with his backpack on and the left side of his face a horrible, obvious red.

He probably would have stormed all the way across town to murder Reggie’s parents himself if the boy in question hadn’t obviously been one stiff breeze from breaking apart.

So Bobby doesn’t go rushing off to commit murder. Instead he settles Reggie on the couch and he sits next to him, closer than he usually would, and he lets Reggie cry his heart out until he can’t cry anymore. They stay there together that night, on the old air mattress Luke had brought for sleepovers that’s barely big enough for the two of them. And they lay just far apart to not touch while also not falling off and try to come up with lies to tell the others about the bruise blossoming on Reggie’s face.

Reggie doesn’t want to worry them, he says. It was only the once, he says. It wouldn’t happen again, he says. (He’s never going back, he doesn’t say, but Bobby hears anyways.)

He doesn’t know how to tell Reggie that it’s ok if he comes closer, that he wouldn’t mind if Reggie needed more right now, needed to be held, because he loves Reggie so much and Reggie very clearly needs to be held. He can’t… All he can do is put his hand between them and take Reggie’s, squeeze it tight.

In the morning, Reggie will be curled up against his back, tears dried on his cheeks, and Bobby’s skin will crawl at the closeness but he will not pull away.

Reggie spends five nights out of seven at the garage, either on the couch or up in the loft on the air mattress. He’ll spend the sixth at his own house, testing out the waters, seeing if either of his parents have noticed he’s gone. And the seventh at Bobby’s, the night after, crying into Bobby’s pillows because they hadn’t.

They’re sixteen when Alex finally decides that he’s going to come out to his parents. He tells them all at practice on Monday afternoon and they all wait with bated breath for the news to break.

Bobby is honestly, truly surprised to see Alex crying on the couch of the studio Tuesday afternoon after school- which Alex had missed. Of all of them, Alex probably had the best relationship with his parents, the happiest home life. But as Alex recounts the screaming and the crying and the insults and everything that had led to this… Bobby cannot wrap his head around it. How parents as kind and loving as Alex’s could turn out like this.

Alex spends the week in the studio to give his folks time to cool down. Reggie pretends he hasn’t been living here for two months already by saying they’ll make it a sleepover. Bobby does not say anything as he hunkers himself down on the couch for the week. Luke stays most nights, when he can, but ultimately still sleeps at home at his mother’s request.

Alex will go home eventually, they all know, because he loves his parents too much to be away forever. But what almost breaks him is on Wednesday, when Dani doesn’t show up to practice like she has every week for the last year. Alex could deal with his parents being upset with him. He could handle his little sister doing the same.

Bobby wishes he could tell Alex that they will always love him, that they’ll always be a family, that Dani will come around eventually, his parents will too, because Alex is amazing and wonderful and so deserving of love and kindness.

But he can’t, so instead he waits until Reggie and Luke are cuddled up on the air mattress in the loft, snoring loud enough to wake the dead. And he pulls Alex down onto the couch next to him, and he holds his hand, and he waits.

Alex does not need much more than that for everything to come pouring out of him. All of his fears and worries and insecurities and hopes and dreams. Bobby does not speak during this, he doesn’t need to. He is just here to listen. 

And Alex cries during this, he sobs ugly and awful and Bobby just holds his hand, squeezes. ‘I’m here’ he tries to make Alex understand, ‘I’m always here’.

“So,” he says eventually, when Alex’s tears have slowed, “I’m thinking we grab that family of feral cats that live under Mrs. Johnson’s front porch and set them loose in your house.” Alex laughs until he’s crying all over again.

The next day Dani shows up, clearly having skipped dance class, and she spends the whole afternoon curled up in Alex’s arms as he cries. 

In December, exactly four days before Christmas, Luke runs away from home. Reggie had been the only one there but he’d called Bobby and Alex who’d both come running immediately.

Luke is a mess, sobbing into the couch cushions as Reggie tries to comfort him. Alex instantly puts himself at Luke’s side, slotting himself onto the couch and putting Luke’s head in his lap, carding gentle fingers through his hair to soothe him. Bobby sits on the far end of the couch, one hand on Luke’s ankle, squeezing as tight as he can.

Reggie tells Luke that he’ll live in the studio too, like he hadn’t been there for months already, and the two of them curl up together on the air mattress every night. Alex spends a lot of nights with them rather than going home to the quiet judgement from his parents. Bobby sleeps on the couch most nights just so he doesn’t have to go home to that stillness.

But three days after Christmas Luke is antsy with regret and misery, wanting to go back and apologize but feeling unable too. It makes him snappish, like a cornered animal.

Reggie and Bobby had run into Emily on the street that afternoon, and she’d cried and begged them to tell her where Luke was, if he was safe, if he was ok. If he was ever coming home. And they’d stood there and looked her right in they eye and they’d lied. Told her they hadn’t seen him. Hadn’t heard anything. That they’d let her know when Luke reached out.

Reggie had told Luke as soon as they’d got back to the studio, and Luke had broken apart all over again.

Bobby waits two days for Alex and Reggie to try their hand at comfort before he snags one hand in Luke’s hood and drags him out of the studio and out into the middle of nowhere. He’d spent three days gathering glass bottles from restaurant dumpsters and convenience store truckers, and now he has a small mountain of glass ready.

He presses the first one into Luke’s hand gently, holding on for just a second too long, and then watches as Luke’s face crumples in on itself as he shatters the glass against the floor with a scream.

He’s not sure how long they’re there, it feels simultaneously like seconds and hours, but eventually the glass is all shattered across the ground and the tension has left Luke’s body and he’s just standing there, shaking, crying into his hands.

Bobby comes up behind Luke and leans his head on his shoulder, just the barest bit of touch to let him know he’s there. One of Luke’s hands come up to grip at his hair, shaking, and his sobs come out awful and choking and loud. Bobby just stands there, lets Luke let it all out.

He wishes for the millionth time that he was able to hold his friends without his skin crawling. That he was able to tell them just how much they meant to him.

But he can’t. So instead he lays on the couch and stares at the pile of his three best friends, his brothers, lying on the floor of the studio cuddled together as they all sleep in the garage for the fifth night in a row.

It’s early June when they all pile into Meredith for what will be the biggest night of their lives. For the first time, Luke is not asleep in the backseat, instead he’s bouncing with a nervous, excited energy that’s infecting all of them. Alex is still praying the van doesn’t break down, but he’s also praying not to pass out from sheer anxiety. Reggie’s grip is white-knuckled on the steering wheel and he very nearly crashes them into a tree. Bobby grips the handle on the roof and stares blankly out the window, trying to wrap his mind around it.

They’re playing the Orpheum tonight. Tonight, all of their dreams come true. Tonight, everything changes.

The sound check is probably the best they’ve ever played, which means that the show is going to be the most amazing thing they’ve ever done. Reggie is bouncing around the room, grinning wider than Bobby’s ever seen. Alex is tapping his fingers on every available surface, including Bobby’s arm, to try and keep from pacing. Luke is touching them all, shaking their shoulders, grabbing their hands, pulling on their shirts. Bobby knocks his shoulder back, lets Alex keep drumming on his arm, smiles back at Reggie as wide as he can.

Tonight changes everything.

Rose is beautiful and older and very clearly uninterested in the seventeen year old kid flirting with her, but that’s never stopped Bobby before. The boys leave with slaps on his back and waggled eyebrows and a wet willy, all of them knowing that he is absolutely not going to be getting any phone numbers tonight.

Bobby doesn’t mind that Rose doesn’t respond to his flirting, because Rose is honestly just a really cool person. They spend forty-five minutes straight talking about music and bands they like and instruments before Bobby realizes that the guys should have been back by now.

When one of the security guys comes through to tell everyone that there was apparently a huge incident down the street at the hot dog place, Bobby goes pale, his heart stops beating, and he swears he the world stops moving for one terrible, awful second.

“My friends are there…” he thinks he says, because suddenly Rose is right in front of him, eyes wide

“I’ll take you.” She says, and she says more, to him and to the people around her, but before he knows it she’s ushering him into a beat up pickup that looks only slightly better than Meredith. 

He’ll have to tell Reggie that, just to see the way he puffs up in defense of his van. To see Luke smother a laugh in his fist and Alex nod agreeably. They’ll laugh about this later, that they almost missed the most important night of their lives because of Luke’s bottomless pit of a stomach and Alex’s terrible taste in street food. It’ll be funny.

The street they usually go to for hot dogs is surrounded by a big crowd and police cars. Bobby pushes his way through, not really processing any of it. Rose is the one who talks to the officers, asking about three teenage boys.

“-to the hospital,” he’s saying when Bobby is able to hear over the rushing of his heart in his ears, “They were in pretty bad shape.”

Bobby can’t breath. He can’t… They can’t…

Rose takes his hand and pulls him back to her car. She really is a good person. Kind. She’s known him for less than an hour and she’s helping him track down his best friends that are on their way to the hospital because…

Bobby should have gone with them. He should have… He…

He’s never going to let them live this down when they all get home, to the studio. He’s going to lord this over their head for the rest of their lives that they had to go to the hospital because of hot dogs. He’s going to make sure he talks about in every interview once they make it big.

Rose keeps driving, keeps talking to him, saying how ‘everything will be alright’ and ‘I’m sure they’re fine’ and ‘please calm down’.

He is calm. Totally calm. Nothing is wrong. He’s just not breathing because everything is fine.

Everything has to be fine.

When they get to the hospital, when they both run inside and ask about the three teenage boys who had come in with food poisoning, when the nurse’s face goes all sad and pained and awful…..

Bobby’s knees hit the ground and his fingers tear at his hair and he screams.


End file.
